Gaddis' last published work of fiction. Takes the form of a rambling monologue from a dying man about his life, his shattered will to live, his heirs fighting over his other will, technology, the madness of crowds and the herd mentality, the mechanization of art, disease, death, and so forth.

I read this book while in a haze of pain/painkillers, after having been holed up for several days after having spilled some coffee on my legs and gotten some crazy burns. I have to assume these circumstances affected my impression of it which is extreme and immediate and a little bit hysterical, much like the book itself. In fact, I am pretty sure I am overidentifying in a kind of absurd way, but I have to say in my defense that the book invites it.

What struck me most while reading Agape Agape was the sense that we are all absolutely doomed with no hope of any kind of authentic experience in our lives, much less authentic art, but since we have never known anything better all we can do is pursue more, more, more mediocrity and false experience in our increasingly mechanized and soulless age, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, things fall apart, the center cannot hold, our bodies are falling apart, our life work is unaccomplished and even if it were accomplished there would be none among the duped, doped and stupefied masses to read, hear or comprehend it. I thought of, you know, American Idol, celebration of it-could-be-me mediocrity. I thought about how it seems like more people want to learn how to write than learn how to read, and don't seem to consider the latter a prerequisite for the former. I thought about my own slide into indulged, entertained, look-I'm-participating-on-by-writing-this-review-on-goodreads inanity. Then I thought about how even reading this book is kind of like playing a player piano because it's pauseless stream of consciousness enters your own so that it's as though you are thinking these thoughts yourself and participating, but actually it is just taking you over. Then I thought it was time to finish up the book, get out of the house, and lay off the vicodin for awhile.

After taking just a step back (but only a little one, I should have waited longer, I think) the strongest impression I was left with was the sense of the limitation of the author. While I was reading it felt absolutely true that the player piano was a sign and symbol of the wearing down of some previous not-exactly-delineated time when experience could have been authentic and art both true and truly appreciated, maybe here is an example:

"...what happened? What happened! Go back to that biggest thrill in music is your own participation where did it tip, where did it go from participating even in these cockneyed embraces with Beethoven and Wagner and, and Hofmann and Grieg and these ghostly hands on the, what took it from entertaining to being entertained? From this phantom entertainer to this bleary stupefied pleasure seeking, what breaks your heart. 'Discover your unsuspected talent' that's what breaks your heart, losing that whole, that loss of a kind of innocence that crept in, drifting away of that romantic intoxication that was really quite ridiculous but it was, no it was really quite wonderful, for the first time music in homes anyone's home 'every member of the household may be a performer' this ad says, discovering his unsuspected talent with his feet, this romantic illusion of participating, playing Beethoven yourself that was being destroyed by the technology that had made it possible in the first place..."

Everyone knows this feeling, right? And by coincidence I was reading Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" at the same time, and I want to write about that more. But here, even though the feeling behind his argument is so forcefully conveyed, the argument itself is not quite made. The feeling in the end is that the book has failed, and the sense of this failure was more compelling than the argument itself. It ends, "That was Youth with its reckless exuberance when all things were possible pursued by Age where we are now, looking back at what we destroyed, what we tore away from that self who could do more, and its work that's become my enemy because that's what I can tell you about, that Youth who could do anything." And THAT is what breaks your heart. ( )

Hardcore Gaddis fans will appreciate this insight to his work and philosophy. A lot of us have waited a long time to see the perpetually edited work of Gaddis' best characters, Jack Gibbs.native son ( )

Maddening, posthumous, short, this book was never meant to be published. It appears to be notes that were left out of the author's previous two novels. Read it as an addendum to "A Frolic of His Own' if you can't ever get enough of Gaddis. ( )

"William Gaddis published four novels during his lifetime, immense and complex books that helped inaugurate a whole new movement in American letters. Now comes his final work of fiction, a subtle, concentrated culmination of his art and ideas." "For more than fifty years Gaddis collected notes for a book about the mechanization of the arts, told via a social history of the player piano in America. In the years before his death in 1998, he distilled the whole mass into a fiction, a dramatic monologue by an elderly man with a terminal illness. This "man in the bed" lies dying, thinking anxiously about the book he still plans to write, grumbling about the deterioration of civilization and trying to explain his obsession to the world before he passes away or goes mad." Agape Agape continues Gaddis's career-long reflection via the form of the novel on those aspects of the corporate technological culture that are uniquely destructive of the arts. It is a stunning achievement from one of the indisputable masters of postwar American fiction. ( )

No but you see I've got to explain all this because I don't, we don't know how much time there is left and I have to work on the, to finish this work of mine while I, why I've brought in this whole pile of books notes pages clippings and God knows what, get it all sorted and organized when I get this property divided up and the business and worries that go with it while they keep me here to be cut up and scraped and stapled and cut up again my damn leg look at it, layered with staples like that old suit of Japanese armour in the dining hall feel like I'm being dismantled piece by piece, houses, cottages, stables orchards and all the damn decisions and distractions I've got the papers land surveys deeds and all of it right in this heap somewhere, get it cleared up and settled before everything collapses and it's all swallowed up by lawyers and taxes like everything else

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Wikipedia in English (2)

William Gaddis's final work, Agape Agape, is an effective distillation of his philosophy and a powerful personal statement regarding the state of modern culture. The book is written in the form of a disjointed, stream-of-consciousness monologue delivered by a dying elderly man, himself attempting to complete his final work, a social history of the player piano in America. Desperate to complete his work before the onset of madness or death and fighting the effects of medication, the frantic narrator offers a meandering discussion of his work, which explores technology's artistically stifling influence. The narrator has isolated a particularly profound example of this in the player piano, an artistic invention that alternately replaced the artist. Technology, the narrator argues, has heightened the value of passivity, entertainment, and mediocrity, leading to the impending "collapse of everything, of meaning, of language, of values, of art, disorder and dislocation wherever you look." The narrator fervently claims that only through artistic courage can we achieve understanding, transcendence, and discover the uniting spirit of creativity, a brotherly "agape" love.

As Joseph Tabbi explains in his informative afterword, Agape Agape is the result of years of research and consideration by Gaddis, and the novella explores technological advancement and the response to this advancement, both actual and hypothetical, by such figures as Nietzsche, Walter Benjamin, and Tolstoy. While an impressive work of scholarship, Agape Agape is foremost an emotional decree, Gaddis's final statement of outrage and sadness at our cultural direction and a plea for change. At less than 100 sparsely punctuated pages, the book is an efficient combustion of energy and an affecting depiction of personal and cultural disintegration. At once a condemnation, warning, and affirmation, it reflects Gaddis's apprehensions but also his enduring faith in the power of creation. A worthwhile starting point for newcomers to Gaddis's work, Agape Agape is a memorable end to the career of a gifted thinker. --Ross Doll